Quotes from Tom Thibodeau

The way you execute in this league is through repetition, and that's both offensively and defensively.

You work every day with your player development, try to improve through the draft, you have free agency and you have trades. I think you have to be very aggressive in each area. Sitting back and waiting sometimes is not a good thing.

Injuries are part of the game for everybody. You have to manage those circumstances as best you can.

I think that's a big challenge in the NBA: How quickly can you adapt? Because things always change in the league - whether it's trade, free agency, an injury, you have to adapt quickly.

It's more than just playing hard. You have to maintain concentration and you have to combine that with your intensity level.

I think players look around and they look at the teams that they'd like to join and it's usually teams that already have good players on those teams.

There are no short cuts. If you want to do something special, there's a serious price to pay. There's no way around it.

Sometimes as players achieve more and more and get further down the line in their careers, they tend to skip over the work part.

I know what New York is like when the Knicks are successful and there is nothing comparable.

I grew up as a kid and the Knicks were great.

There's obviously different roads you can go down. And I think if you study it, how teams are built - and I went through this in Minnesota - the draft is critical, free agency is critical, player development is critical and trade opportunities are critical.

When you look at what a coach does, it is leadership, it is communication, it is teaching, it is motivation. It really comes down to those four things.

I think the important thing is to lock into what you have to do each and every day, put everything you have into it, and then you let the results speak for themselves.

You're put into a box where you're either an offensive, defensive coach or a player development guy. Fair or unfair. You have to be whatever your team needs you to be.

You run the floor. Kick the ball out, repost, keep moving around, search it out, get to the offensive board. You've got to sprint around. You learn when teams are double-teaming you - that's what you have to do. You have to make the right play.

I think I experienced it during the '90s that there's no better place to be than Madison Square Garden.

You miss the camaraderie of being around your team and your staff. It's good to be back in the middle of it all.

You set standards so things can be measured and done at a championship level.

There's some nights you shoot the ball better than others. When you don't shoot it well, you have to have an understanding you can play well by doing other things.

And when you study the NBA, you realize and know that the NBA is never staying the same. It's always evolving, it's always changing.

The game never stays the game - it's always evolving.

The teams that win consistently, they put the work into it and they don't skip steps.

When you look at coaching in the pros 25-plus years, I have been with rebuilding teams and I have been with championship teams, and so I know all the steps in-between.

You know I'm never happy. I'm not happy, unless I'm miserable.